Thank you ddrecovery. I will go through your list again with a fine tooth comb I hope one has there own R&D place that will cost less than driver savers. 2000$ is a huge amount to me at the moment. At the very least, a no data no save policy is a must since I might have to ship the drive to a few places

I just got off the phone with data savers and I mentioned the Marvel controller might complicate the case so a technician will give me a call after his lunch break. She looked up on her computer they recently serviced a liteon 512 and they couldn't salvage the data even after it going to level B, which means going in the clean room and having electrical work done on it (no clue what this means).

When I speak with the technician, I will ask him if he wants to see photos of the drive itself and if its okay to open it. Hopefully, he'll say yes and I can share the photos

I mentioned that the PC3000 does not support the LITEON marvell controller. He said the issue of it being a marvell controller is superfluous in diagnosing or salvage. He said it isn't the only tool in his toolbox. He won't know until he has the drive if he can hook it up to the machines and recover the data

He said he was able to salvage 5 other OEM LITEON SSD's, while one other he could not. Some were level A and some B. Level A, to me implies he could use the PC3000 or some other machine and it all goes according to plan. When I asked if in these cases the PC3000 was used, he said "we cannot disclose that information".

He said no one can tell me if the PC3000 can save the data based on its components, not even ACE labs, a contradiction from what I've learned here and elsewhere.

It seems I have no choice but to send it out and see what they say. Its free ups shipping two ways. Can't hurt, so I'm going for it.

He said no one can tell me if the PC3000 can save the data based on its components, not even ACE labs, a contradiction from what I've learned here and elsewhere.

Not really. Each data recovery case is unique. Knowing the controller will let you know if PC-3000 can TRY to work with a particular SSD model, but that doesn't mean it's going to be able to resolve the issue in your particular case. That depends on how it actually failed.

Data Savers are a good company, you should be fine, and they'll be a lot cheaper than Drivesavers.

As I suspected, it got escalated immediately to class B, so no super easy, routine salvage.

My questions

Quote:

What are the risks to the data going through the level B process? Is there a chance the data could be rendered in accessible? What processes or machines were you considering using so I may do a bit of research.

Are you fairly confident that you would be able to recover the data in level B? Ie, is the solution apparent?

Specifically, I assume the drive could not connect with the PC3000. Is this correct?

Please go into as much detail as you can on what you tried and what you plan on doing in level B. Talk to me and tell me as it is as you were talking to a fellow specialist. I will research as much possible your reply and I have a few people who are very knowledgeable who can help me understand. Thank you.

Quote:

One more thing I'd like to add, if I may. I spoke with the head technician at ACE labs and he recommended,

I recommend you to cold down drive to -20 below zero and wait for 2 hours. Then - connect it to PC-3000 and try to pass initialization. Sometimes cold temperature can help to make drive works again

I hope this information could be of some help

In short his reply was they cannot share the processes they use and that "it is not a user guided process"

Well, I was hoping for more of a human response and some openness on the process. I am paying a lot of money and I feel sorta entitled to learn exactly how they go about it so I can at least be in the loop.

I still think my concern about cooling the drive might cause the PC3000 to read it. I haven't replied yet as I was hoping I can get a bit of feedback so far. Should I insist on having them cool the drive first to see if maybe the PC3000 might be able to read it and so it wont have to escalate to class B, and I save 300 dollars. The first thing the makers of the PC3000 said is to try cooling it if it cannot be initialized. The email they sent me having received the drive and the and the response that it needs class B was not enough time for them to have tried cooling it. It was within an hour. It would be a lot easier if he can confirm if he actually tried to use the PC3000 on it.

How likely is it it is the first thing he tried and since it failed, it escalated to B. He confirmed they have many such machines at there office. He said a few times they have other methods, but that can mean anything. What other methods could theoretically work with an SSD from LITEON?

To be honest, if they don't share with there customers exactly what they tried and what failed, what is to stop them from bumping every case they receive to class B!? Makes it hard to trust. Is this common not to share such info with customers? Do each company have there own proprietary techniques than need safeguarding?

@TTU, you are asking too much of the data recovery company. Would you go to hospital for surgery and after some 'research on the internet' tell the surgeon what he should or should not be doing. Of course you wouldn't. You trust that their experience and knowledge gets you the best results possible. While cooling a NAND chip might help it read, this works very rarely indeed and really is a last resort.

Trust this company and their processes, they do know what they are doing. Also Jon from Data Savers is also a big contributor to this forum so undoubtedly he is following your posts.

@TTU, you are asking too much of the data recovery company. Would you go to hospital for surgery and after some 'research on the internet' tell the surgeon what he should or should not be doing. Of course you wouldn't. You trust that their experience and knowledge gets you the best results possible. While cooling a NAND chip might help it read, this works very rarely indeed and really is a last resort.

Trust this company and their processes, they do know what they are doing. Also Jon from Data Savers is also a big contributor to this forum so undoubtedly he is following your posts.

Haha, yes, I came to the same conclusion. I wrote my reply it seems a little after you wrote this, but I just now read it for what its worth

Of course, by no means did I say in anyway what they should or shouldn't do. I simply gave a little bit advice I heard directly from PC3000 on the first thing they would try if the machine didn't read it. I thought it was worth the effort to share, though its probably common knowledge. Its a presumption that I thought that mostly the PC3000 is the only machine people use. All is well. I just hope they can salvage it.

I believe the technician I am working with is Andy. He was very helpful when I spoke with him on the phone so I trusted the company enough to send the drive to them, though I had other options. I am merely honestly sharing my thoughts and feelings in this thread and not censoring myself, perhaps to a fault. I hope this is understandable. Cheers, guys.

To be honest, the amount of info shared with you already is more than normal.. Not to the level you hoped for notwithstanding.

There is an old saying: " If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit." In flash, even a seasoned DR pro would be hard pressed to separate the two, this is the nature of flash storage.

Something factors of the case that sounds logical, intuitive and proper could be wild speculation such as

"Those drives have 2 chips with 2 crystals each and a simple block pair will allow you to create an image." (the drive may have totally different flash chips)

or

"The SA on these are XORed before ECC applied and XOR depends on the block number, so the algorithm is impossible to find"

Also, bear in mind everyone here is a subset of Flash recovery going on in the real word. There is quite probably labs way advanced than this community doing great work, and work that we believe is impossible. It just takes time before it becomes known. For the longest time the general consensus was SandForce based flash wasn't generally recoverable.

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank you all again for your advice and to share the recent progress and news.

1. Drive goes to data savers. They had a look at it and felt a larger company would have better luck (one with an in house R and D) and recommended Gilware. No "easy - standard" solution seen.2. They sent to Gilware for evaluation and estimate. No "easy solution" either and gave an estimate around 1500 - 2600. Not thrilled with the price, which is similar to drive savers, so felt I might as well go with drive savers since they are endorsed by Liteon (for whatever that's worth).3. Drive goes to drive savers, gave the same estimate but got lowered and capped at 1500 if I allowed them to take there time with it. A month goes by with back and for communication every once in a while. Then they left an email saying it will take another month (time is okay if they can get drive). Two days later they say they cannot save the data so they sent it back to me (in a plastic no shielded envelope!)

So a few months later, I'm back here in this thread going over my options, which seem to dwindle as more time goes on, though, I will NOT give up on this hard drive data, EVER. Even if years go by, maybe a new solution comes forward.

Two concerns.

1. Time - data might be lost as time goes by (any information about this would be helfpul)2. My best hope now is to hope one of these other companies has some made genius working for them whose solution is known but not shared amongst companies. So, my initial response of being dismayed by companies not sharing there proprietary methods, at this point, might be my only hope to salvage this drive. Therefore, I would imagine only a few companies could realistically take on this project at this point -- those with R and D teams whose job it is to stay up to date with new methods and synthesize there own solutions. Which companies are these? I was thinking of trying Gilware next. Knowing all of them will be helpful though.

If you were in my shoes, stubborn, and will never give up, what would be your next option when possibly the best (atleast most expensive) place returns it and says it's unrecoverable? I'm hoping they didn't feel the 1500 would justify the R and D so they gave up midway, but who knows.

It says it should not be data destructive. add it to a system as a secondary drive and try it.

ONLY get the update from DELL!! there are sites that are packaging malware pretending to be firmware updates. They snavel your search term, substitute that and re-write the HTML to pretend their malware is an update to your specific model you are searching for.

Good job finding that link. I will try that asap though I did notice that the firmware update is over a 1 year old that supposively fixed the issue. I hope that the firmware I had installed was already that version, but I think this is definetly worth a closer look. Thanks.

The only 88SS1074-BSW2 based SSD I have in my research pool here now is a Kingston and I could take a dump from it, but I'm worried they wouldn't be compatible for research, as Liteon appear to at least tweak the firmware .. any mention of custom algorithms make me wary:

Quote:

The CV3 series SSD adopts a new controller with the low-density parity-check (LDPC) algorithm. By implementing the controller’s LDPC error-correcting technology, this extends the drives endurance with TLC Flash as much as 33%, hitting reliability levels only attainable with MLC flash. The blazing-fast writes are achieved by intelligently treating certain memory cells as premium single-level-cell NAND for maximum speed. When, during idle time, data in those cells is stashed away to fully exploit the capacity benefits of TLC flash.

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I guess it is possible both Liteon and Kingston get an SDK for their versions of drives and simply do a few config options.. then talk up their "custom firmware development" kinda like the home router vendors do with their firmwares.

I have a Liteon SSD but different model and controller that I also don't think useful in research for this, Liteon LCS-128M6S with Marvell 8SS9187-BLD2

I have some more Marvell based SSDs at work and will have to have a look what they are.

To my amazement, ACE Data Recovery out of Texas was able to fully recover a Sandforce SSD that was called unrecoverable by DriveSavers. So, they may be able to do it, though be ready to fasten your seat belt on their pricing.

Thus far, I've sent some test case Sandforce SSDs (I know that this topic isn't about Sandforce, but it is about the best lab for SSD) to Ontrack, DriveSavers, Seagate and ACE. Of the four, ACE is the only one which didn't try to BS me by saying that the drive was being worked on in the clean room. Although I still feel that ACE may have included some BS, too, they actually did recover the data faster than the other labs were able to say that they couldn't.

To my amazement, ACE Data Recovery out of Texas was able to fully recover a Sandforce SSD that was called unrecoverable by DriveSavers. So, they may be able to do it, though be ready to fasten your seat belt on their pricing.

Thus far, I've sent some test case Sandforce SSDs (I know that this topic isn't about Sandforce, but it is about the best lab for SSD) to Ontrack, DriveSavers, Seagate and ACE. Of the four, ACE is the only one which didn't try to BS me by saying that the drive was being worked on in the clean room. Although I still feel that ACE may have included some BS, too, they actually did recover the data faster than the other labs were able to say that they couldn't.

To my amazement, ACE Data Recovery out of Texas was able to fully recover a Sandforce SSD that was called unrecoverable by DriveSavers. So, they may be able to do it, though be ready to fasten your seat belt on their pricing.

Thus far, I've sent some test case Sandforce SSDs (I know that this topic isn't about Sandforce, but it is about the best lab for SSD) to Ontrack, DriveSavers, Seagate and ACE. Of the four, ACE is the only one which didn't try to BS me by saying that the drive was being worked on in the clean room. Although I still feel that ACE may have included some BS, too, they actually did recover the data faster than the other labs were able to say that they couldn't.

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